


The Waters of Strife

by Hyarrowen



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Obscure and British Commentfest, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 14:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6083199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyarrowen/pseuds/Hyarrowen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three scenes from the Great War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Waters of Strife

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cricri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricri/gifts).



> _“Bunter!”_  
>  _Mr. Bunter hurried back to his side._  
>  _“Oh, nothing!” said his lordship. “Only I've just thought of a name for it.”_  
>  _“For——”_  
>  _“That memorial,” said Lord Peter. “I choose to call it 'Meribah.'”_  
>  _“Yes, my lord. The waters of strife. Exceedingly apt, my lord."_
> 
> **Clouds of Witness**  
> 
> This fic was written for cricri's prompt in the Obscure and British Commentfest 2015: "Flashbacks".

**The Brocklebury Sale**

“Bunter can always be trusted with books,” Wimsey told himself, now and then throughout that perplexing afternoon at Battersea Park. Indeed, it was this tendency – not altogether usual in bibliophiles – that had first drawn his attention to Mervyn Bunter.

In the late spring of 1915, Wimsey had been passing down the newly-dug communication trench, fringed with poppies, to the wetter environs of the support trenches, thence past the grimly welcoming sign bearing the legend “Bomb Alley”. 

There were no bombs at the moment, though. It was a quiet day. A skylark or two sang unconcernedly, halfway to heaven, and even the sound of the guns was distant and muted. Yesterday's rain trickled between the duckboards; a pump chugged away a hundred yards or so down the line, making, by the looks of it, little impression on their private reservoir.

On the fire-step a little way down the next section of the trench sat a man, a little older than Wimsey himself. He was reading. Wimsey had seen many a man reading or writing; letters, mostly, but some of them seemed to be working hard at what they wrote. Sometimes he had caught glimpses of poetry, of diaries and of dense-written texts, separated from their owners, floating down the runnels of water to an unknown destination; and like many an officer or man, had rescued these and sent them to be dried out and forwarded if, as seemed all too likely, their writers would not need them again.

And the books. Very often a man would voyage away from this place through a book, or books. This fellow, for example; more absorbed in his book than many an undergraduate in more carefree years.

His face was familiar.

“I say. Didn't I see you at that ruined church, a few days back?” 

A few days ago, in the reserve area, there had been theatricals, and a football tournament. Since then they had rotated up to the firing line again, and it seemed like another life entirely.

The man, startled out of his reverie, got to his feet, keeping his place in – good heavens, _Countess Kate_. “Very likely, sir. I was shifting books away from it.” 

The church had been so recently hit that stones still fell now and then; this man had been picking his way between leaning gravestones. In his hands were a small stack of books.

“The parish records, and what looked to me like an eighteenth-century breviary. And a box with a book of hours, or so I believe.”

Wimsey whistled soundlessly. “You did well to save those.”

“It's not quite my faith, sir, but close enough. I left them with the Curé in the village further back. He said he'd send them on to the diocese. I couldn't find the incumbent of that particular church.”

Still buried in the rubble, at a guess. Wimsey nodded, his eyes attentive on the other's face. “Tell me, what did the book of hours look like?”

His last batman had been invalided home just a week ago, minus a foot and pale but grinning. Wimsey had been looking out for a replacement. Maybe this fellow would do, he thought.

And he'd been right.

**Mid-Atlantic**

Grant was a hunched figure in the cockpit ahead of him, his flying-jacket and helmet slick with rain, the sky a featureless grey beyond him. There was this to be thankful for, the wind and its attendant rain were at their backs. Half its force was lost that way – or so the pilot of the Handley-Page had told him, one drizzly, cold evening in the winter of 1917.

“Easy to get over the Lines, not so easy to get back!” Davidson had said, applying grease to his face with a liberal hand. To keep out the chill, he had said, when Wimsey enquired; not an option that was available to him, where he was going. “You've got everything? I'm not turning back because you've forgotten a clean shirt, you know!”

Wimsey eyed him coldly. “Look here. I've been out on this bally front since before you cut your teeth, young feller-me-lad. Suppose you do your job, and I'll do mine?”

“On your head be it,” said the youngster, and vaulted up into the pilot's seat. The forward gunner, with a grin, ran up the ladder into the front cockpit, leaving Wimsey to clamber more sedately into the rear gunner's position.

Bunter, a grisaille figure standing somewhere below Wimsey's right elbow, handed up the small bag with essentials for a few days inside it, including, indeed, a clean shirt. The tiny camera was already tucked safely inside his flying-jacket.

“You remember what I told, you, sir? I ought to go instead of you – or with you, at least -”

“You open your mouth once while you're over there and you're declared an Englishman. No, you've drilled me in what I need to know. You stay here and put the kettle on in three days' time, there's a good chap.”

Bunter stepped back and saluted. Wimsey gave him a half-wave, and set about fastening his safety-straps.

“Contact!” “Contact!” came the calls from the mechanics, standing by the twin engines. Dragon-like roars bellowed out of the dusk, along with a stench of burnt fuel. Wimsey pulled down his goggles as they moved off; the trundle of wheels across the grass ceased, and the giant machine lifted – yes, as easily as a bird.

“Good lord. No wonder they're all mad keen to fly!” he thought; and then the horizon tilted up around the left wing-tip, and the watery sunset swung into view, and passed behind them again. Wimsey caught a glimpse of a foreshortened figure on the aerodrome, and looked down at it as long as he could make it out; then the machine straightened and bored away into the darkling east.

The tea, when he drank it down three days of knife-edge anxiety later, was excellent; but by now he expected no less of Sergeant Bunter.

**Peter's Pot**

His sleep the night following the latest little adventure, out on the moors, was troubled. It had been all too like a certain day in the fag-end of the autumn of 1918, when he'd thought that his number was finally up, after four years and with the end in sight. The final advance, the last desperate throw of the exhausted Germans, had caught them all on the hop; but the British Army had set its back to the wall and held on with much grousing, and, finally, pushed back. Somewhere between Cambrai and Le Cateau, though, he and Bunter had found themselves trapped in a shell-hole in a nightmare of mud and barbed wire. 

Why the devil was there never a tank when you needed one? They were stuck, and stuck fast, while a rolling barrage had exploded above them, like the Last Trump made tangible. Shock-wave after shock-wave smashed down on them.

Wimsey, glancing up, saw a great mass of earth, sodden by the autumn rain, slump down towards him. He slithered frantically to avoid it, but the mud beneath gave no purchase for escape. All he could do was crane his neck up, and then the weight, heavy as tombstones, was upon him. 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a scramble of khaki. Bunter, bareheaded, and fortuitously on the other side of the shell-hole, was at his side. No words were spoken, but something hard and sharp-edged was shoved under his head. A piece of duck-board, his mind registered briefly. Then, as a couple of machines swept overhead – jazzily painted, he observed vaguely, and therefore from the Richthofen Circus, though the ring-master himself was months dead - anyway, now Bunter had dragged his entrenching tool from his belt and was going at it.

“My leg's bent round – take it steady, old fellow,” said Wimsey breathlessly. It was difficult to speak, with all that weight pressing on his chest.

Engines blipped above them. Those were Camels for sure, coming after the enemy machines. Bullets smacked into the mud around them.

“Get down!”

“No. Sir.” Bunter was still digging. “If it's got my number on it...”

“Damned idiot. Take my tin hat. Put it on. You get shot, I'm done for anyway.” 

Bunter gave him a desperate look, took the helmet and put it on. He resumed digging. There was a loud splintering crash just out of sight. One of the machines. Mud splattered over them. “Hope it's one of theirs!” he thought. He could no longer get breath to speak.

The rain came on again, falling on his upturned face, while trapped below the surface of his brain something howled for release. A scream. That leg was more than bent; it was badly gashed on something beneath the mud. It would do no good to loose the scream, though, so Wimsey lay rigid, heart hammering, while the chilly mud crept down his collar, into his ears, and around his neck.

And then one of his arms was freed, seized, and used as a lever across Bunter's shoulders. The weight was off his chest, the suction of the mud broken. He sat up slowly, and drew in a wavering gasp of air. He bent his head into Bunter's shoulder, and a burly, sweaty arm came round him, just for a moment, in response.

“Good man,” he mumbled into the rough woollen tunic.

Not just a good man, thought Wimsey, suddenly wide awake in the darkness of Grider's Hole Farm, and mightily relieved to find himself there; Mervyn Bunter was the very best of men.


End file.
